Friday, June 2, 2017

The Trump Trajectory

It’s a pretty spring day, full of
birdsong - so clearly the birds haven’t heard about Trump’s backing out of the
Paris Climate Accord. Of course this is
just the tip of the iceberg, Titanic reference intended, since throughout his
presidency, he’s been hard at work hamstringing the EPA, rolling back regulations,
and attacking the work of scientists.

When I look at Trump’s chart today, I
see that he’s on a roll. Uranus in Aries
is trining his rising Mars in Leo, the prizefighter part of his chart, and so
he’s moving forward, boxing and shadow boxing, proving that he’s the dominant
one. No fears about the future, no
namby-pamby worries about whether his grandchildren will survive. The strong will survive, right? And the rest
can wash out to sea with the crumbling coast-lines.

When I look at Trump’s chart a month
from now, I see a very different picture.
At the end of June, Saturn will be opposing his sun, and this indicates
a crisis of confidence, or an external blow to the ego – and, as we all know,
Trump’s ego is his most vulnerable part.
It could also be a time of physical illness or injury.

And at the same time, this looks like a
tumultuous time for his job, since Pluto in Capricorn makes a series of challenging
aspects, beginning with the square to his Jupiter and the inconjunct to his Uranus. After this, it makes an inconjunct to his sun
and opposes his Saturn. It looks to me
like the gods that lifted him up are going to be laying him down flat. There are some hard lessons between now and
the end of his term – assuming he makes it that long.

Expect things to change for Trump a few
days after the coming summer solstice. All
during the lunar cycle that begins with the new moon of June 23, he’ll feel Saturn’s
opposition to his sun, a weight on his ego.
Does this mean that the Russia investigation will yield some embarrassing
fruit, perhaps involving his financial shenanigans? Will Robert Mueller be the agent of some Trump
undoing?

It’s quite possible. In the new moon chart, the sun, moon, Mercury and
Mars are all in Cancer, within 11° of each other, and they all conjunct Robert
Mueller’s Saturn. Saturn is about
wisdom, maturity, realism, and responsibility, and this puts Mueller in a
position of having to do his duty and deal with something serious. In addition, Mueller’s Saturn is right on top
of Trump’s Mercury, indicating that he’s going to sift through all the Trumpian
misinformation for the truth.

And Mueller’s Saturn gets involved in
Trump’s Mercury/Neptune square, which could be called Trump’s “liar aspect”. This
is not to say that everyone with a Mercury/Neptune square is a liar. It gives a vivid imagination, and many people
with this aspect are writers and artists, or people who have warm, fertile
relationships with the unreal. Neptune is
also about spirituality and idealism, so people with this aspect often work
hard to integrate these other ways of knowing and understanding.

However, for Trump, I’d say he lives
wholly in whatever self-serving delusion leaps into his mind. And after the summer solstice, some of those
delusions could be flayed open on the operating table, visible to everyone.

Recently a reader asked me to compare
Trump’s chart with Putin’s, to see if there were any clues there. Putin
also has a strong Mercury/Neptune aspect, a conjunction. But the main difference between them is that
Putin has a sun/Saturn conjunction. He’s
a realist, and when he shades the truth, or operates on a clandestine level, he
knows what he’s doing.

Many of the aspects between them are
quite positive, so the buddy-buddy thing is visible. They both have dominant, fiery Mars placements,
and their Mars trine each other, so they can work together on mutual goals
quite easily. This could include waging
war against a joint enemy, and both men know this as a sure way to fire up the
base.

Both have strong sun/Uranus contacts, so
they both like to be unpredictable, independent and rebellious. Both have largely airy charts, so they both live
in a world of forms rather than practical realities. Putin, with a sun/Saturn conjunction in Libra
squaring Uranus, has a strong streak of cynicism, but he also believes he is
mostly doing the right thing for his country.
But for both him and Trump, an excess of power and privilege have made
it difficult to differentiate between personal preferences and universal
good. This is how power corrupts.

Trump has no earthy planets in his
chart, so he’s especially ungrounded, hence the obvious ADD. Putin has one earthy planet – Jupiter in
Taurus – so he is more materialistic.
For Trump, I would argue that, even though everything he does seems so
mercenary, it’s all about ego. He likes
the show, the appearance, the glamor, but has little interest in sensual
experiences, lasting security, or any of the other things money can buy.

Putin’s sun conjuncts Trump’s Jupiter,
and I think this refers to the role they’ve taken in making each other (and
their friends) wealthy and successful.
In fact, Putin has four planets conjuncting Trump’s Jupiter, so I would
say he’s used personal influence (the sun), information (Mercury), and
subterfuge (Neptune) to boost Trump’s position in the world. He also has Saturn conjunct Trump’s Jupiter,
and this tends to have the opposite effect, and could mean that he restricts
Trump’s success and prestige.

So does this mean that ultimately the
association with Putin will poke a pin into Trump’s bubble? Could be. Another indication of this is Trump’s
Jupiter squaring Putin’s Uranus – which relates to Putin’s unpredictability and
eccentricity. When Uranus is involved,
things happen quickly and unexpectedly.
And this looks like it could also presage a sudden fall for Putin, eventually,
since Uranus squares all four of his Libra planets.

And so am I predicting the beginning of
the end for Trump? To make things even
ickier for him, Saturn will be conjuncting his moon between mid-July and the
end of September 2017, and this could mean depression, illness, or an even more
extreme drop in popularity. Or it could
mean a stab in the back from someone in his inner circle, like Jared
Kushner. Comparing their two charts, there
are a lot of angry aspects, so they really don’t like each other all that
much. But Trump’s sun opposing Kushner’s
Neptune shows that the latter fits smoothly into the former’s delusions.

However, Trump has one more dose of good
luck coming. He’s got his faithful Jupiter
return, making the last of three exact passes.
The first time was around the time of his electoral college win, and the
second time in April, when the House Intelligence inquiry into his misdeeds was
pretty much falling apart. The third
time will be between July 27 and August 11, so, even though this is a hard time
for him in so many ways, there could be some sort of eleventh hour rescue that
keeps him in office.

Trump has always been a plaything of
fate, never more than when he pulled off the presidential election. But this is the end of his lucky streak.

In late September and through most of
October, Saturn opposes his sun again, so even if he is able to maintain his
position, it’s a low period for his ego and basic vitality. In October, Jupiter moves into Scorpio, a
sign known for exposing scandals and secrets.
By Christmas, when Uranus squares his Saturn, you’ll probably be seeing
a lot of news stories about how the mighty have fallen. Trump sees himself as a
master of deal-making, but his final test may be negotiating his way out of
serious jail time.

And what about the country? In December 2017, Saturn moves into the
spare, ascetic, realistic sign Capricorn.
When Pluto moved into Capricorn, we experienced the Recession of 2008,
and the loss and anxiety caused by this continue today. I expect this to be exacerbated during the two
and a half years that Saturn is in Capricorn, especially as weather conditions
become more extreme, and refugees more plentiful. This will color our next election here in the
US, but it’s hard to know how people will vote when they’re coming from a place
of fear and scarcity.

We know that nature will eventually
recover from whatever humans throw at her, but will humans survive? There is some hope for us, since Saturn will
be moving into Aquarius in 2020, and Pluto into Aquarius in 2023. Pluto will spend the next couple of decades
in this sign, and it will bring both new technology – perhaps at the eleventh
hour, before humans perish – and a stronger drive towards personal
liberation. So that’s the light at the
end of the tunnel. As always, though,
the tunnel comes first.